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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. This episode begins a conversation we have with a friend from college who endured religious and relational trauma alongside us in the same situation as referenced in the Hallelujah and Rumi's episodes from last year. As part of that conversation, those traumas are referenced, religious trauma, relational trauma, and child abuse. No details are disclosed, however.
Speaker 1:But as always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. Hello? Hi. Hi.
Speaker 1:The other thing I have to tell you is that as excited as I am to see you, I am so anxious about talking about this that I am just nauseous and freezing cold and my body is not happy about this conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Mine either.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. I mean, I think
Speaker 3:We're in it together. We're in it together.
Speaker 1:That's a theory. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Have
Speaker 1:I have your emails, two in particular, about the school and about response to hearing your roommate on the podcast. Okay. I have not read them yet for the podcast. I have not talked about any of that yet because it's that hard. And I just feel sick.
Speaker 3:I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:No. Do too. Right? It's it's not it's not it's not your fault, and I'm actually really proud of us for being able to talk about it at all. Oh my goodness, it's hard.
Speaker 1:And I don't think I realized until I talked to her how it so deeply impacted so many layers of our lives.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, my friend, welcome.
Speaker 3:That's so funny.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:cannot Because I hear you say welcome to the System Speak podcast a lot.
Speaker 1:I so okay. We'll start there because that's easier. What does that really like for you to find the podcast and listen to that?
Speaker 3:It's been so good. It's been, gosh, it's been helpful for me, like learning and kind of growing and thinking through things on my own about my own life. But it's also been helpful to get to know you and see how you're doing and what you're learning. And it affects everybody who's listening. And it's so brave of you to share.
Speaker 3:And I want you to feel encouraged and keep doing it because it makes a huge difference. Like, and even for somebody like me who doesn't have DID, or should I call it DIR?
Speaker 1:You can that's funny. I love that you even know that. DID is fine, but I love that you even know that. That's amazing. Dissociative identity response.
Speaker 1:You're talking about that from the books. Oh. But
Speaker 3:it's helpful. It's it's been amazing. And I sent you some of my notes on one of your podcasts just to maybe you can see an example of how of how it can impact people. So and it wasn't even personal notes. Like, I haven't really applied what I learned in that podcast to my life, you know, but I'm just gonna, like, sit with my notes and think about it.
Speaker 3:And, yeah. So it's amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:You made me cry. So many big feelings and we haven't even started.
Speaker 3:I know. I know.
Speaker 1:How would you in case I do air this, how do you wanna introduce yourself? But how are you going to describe how we know each other?
Speaker 3:I would say, my name is Elle. I know Emma from college, from a very difficult time in our lives, which should have been a good time in our lives. I have sort of a background of experience from having foster siblings and adopted siblings. And I have my own mental health issues that I think maybe make me a little different than how I can come across. So, I think being at the college that we were at, they don't take kindly to mental health concerns or to differences that especially ones that affect appearances because I think that college was all about appearances and superficiality and, how they look to the outside is so important to them that we got hurt in the process of trying to learn.
Speaker 1:Found you found even since the podcast aired with our roommate, I'll just call it that, our you found a newspaper article even that the college had been sued.
Speaker 3:Yes. I found that I was just looking for information on the college and, like, what is public knowledge about them? Has anything negative ever come out of the college, you know, because they are all about image, I feel like. Anyway, so I found this article, that talked about a pastor that had graduated from their their college and was working at a church and had been, molesting a child there. And this was found out, and he resigned.
Speaker 3:Our college was copied on that resignation letter, and they knew about this. He was out of a job, so they wrote him a glowing recommendation letter, and he got a job at a different church and went on to, sexually abused kids there, at least one child that we know of. And that child's mother, sued the college for writing that recommendation when they knew about, his abuse and his Yeah, I don't know the word. When they knew about it. And what's really awful is that it was their only defense, Like, that, that they weren't obligated to disclose this abuse.
Speaker 3:And they, you know, there was no apology for recommending him anyway. And that was, that was the end of it. But yeah, yeah, it's just crazy. I consider them to be complicit in that abuse.
Speaker 1:There are so many layers to it because we went there allegedly, me more by circumstances, but theoretically most people go there in part as an expression of their faith. And then we had such difficult experiences there, so many violations there that we didn't realize until later were actually not okay as opposed to us being not okay. Then that impacting us, not even like we've already talked about on the other episodes with how our education was impacted or the aftermath of trying to get back to families or get home or what that was like in those traumas, but then the layers also of me not being able to go back to my family and the school fighting with a therapist and all, like, can't make a movie like this. It was so much that was happening.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I know things were maybe a little different for you because they were sort of your caretakers or their your physical safety was all tied up with being there. You know, you had a home, you had a roof over your head and everything, because you were there. So I'm sure that it's really difficult to be able to call them out on what they did wrong. I mean, hopefully it's a little Hopefully you can do that.
Speaker 3:I hope you feel like you can, now. But even I am just trying to just now realizing what they did wrong and how it affected me. Because, you know, I think of my friends more. I can see more clearly what was happening with you guys and feel awful about it, but not really like, what was their part in how I was doing. So I think that's important, you know, to be able to heal from it.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to breathe. Are you breathing? Mhmm. That was not convincing. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So to the degree that you're comfortable and you don't have to share anything, I mean, it's already uncomfortable, but you don't have to share anything that you're not wanting. How would you even go about telling that story from your perspective? Like, our roommate shared her version. What what do you even do you remember that?
Speaker 1:Do you not remember that?
Speaker 3:I remember some things about what she shared. But I came along a little bit after the period that she talked about. So, I mean, I was there at the college, but, my freshman year, I was all wrapped up in a in a relationship. I had a boyfriend, and, that wasn't good for me. So, our friend was my roommate, and, I was really eager to work on friendships and, and, you know, go hang out with some, some girls in, my sophomore year.
Speaker 3:So, I just love you guys. I just had so much fun with you guys. I'm sorry. Like, the the images are going through my brain, and I don't know how to edit it or which parts to share.
Speaker 1:That's okay. Take your time. Know that for context, we were we overlapped a little bit in the music department. So for me, that's one other layer that feels connected to that. And that's significant also because my biological father was a music minister.
Speaker 1:So there's already complicated layers there. But since getting back in touch with you, music is coming out of me all over the place in all kinds of ways. And it's the funniest thing. Not funny like hilarious, but funny in that therapy is so weird how it does that.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Is it a good thing?
Speaker 1:It is a good thing and it has been a very healing thing. But, but it was also sort of became, I think for both of us in different ways, and I can just talk about mine, but it became a focal point even of where the trauma landed in a way because it's almost like that was what was taken away from us because we had, especially as young adults, barely adults, had no words for what was happening to us. And so between our bodies and between our, I mean this, like the somatic experience of anxiety and trauma and that kind of thing. And with that and our education literally being interrupted, it was like that was part of what was violated was music itself.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, that wasn't painful at all. I keep laughing because I can't cry so much. I mean, I need to cry, I want to cry, but it's so hard to even just sit in the words of what we
Speaker 3:endured. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true that it does feel like that was taken away from us. I am so happy that you're getting a little bit back into music. I heard you sing, and it was so beautiful.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you got my texts about that. But that was wonderful. So yeah. Oh gosh. Should I go back to like the hard stuff?
Speaker 3:So I think what happened for me, had to do with the college not treating you and my friend, our friend, well. And basically just being abusive toward you and the ramifications of that and how that affected me. So that put me in a really scary, dark place where I was alone because I mean, except for having you guys. Because there was so much secrecy around mental illness or the things that we were going through, I couldn't I was bearing some burdens by myself. Because, for example, if a professor found out how much my roommate was struggling, because, like, they would literally tell her she's a bad person, you know, and they don't want her there.
Speaker 3:If I told them, if I told anybody that she would be kicked out, I might be kicked out. I don't know. And we didn't want that to happen. And kind of looking back, you know, it's like that would have been a good thing to happen, but not the way that they do it because, it, they don't send you off in like a, you know, we want you to be doing well So, that sort of message, it's a, You don't belong here. You aren't good enough.
Speaker 3:And, I just, I felt like she could die.
Speaker 1:You were carrying alone things that you shouldn't have been having to carry at all. She was carrying alone things she shouldn't have had to carry at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. But, you and, and like, just your, your room. I remember not being safe and not being in a safe place and hanging out in there, doing homework and, drawing a lot.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry. It's so hard.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:Do you know what I still have? I can give you air for a minute. You know what I still have is the ABC book when we did we drew the hands for the alphabet in sign language and made the book.
Speaker 3:What? I still have that.
Speaker 1:Really? Isn't that a
Speaker 3:funny thing? Yeah. How funny. I know we remember different things. And for all of us, there's like these little gaps in our memories.
Speaker 3:I mean, not just bad things, but, good things too. So, that's cool. I don't have a lot, but I do have, like, some photos and things. Did you remember going to that hotel?
Speaker 1:Why did we go to a hotel? Because we weren't allowed to be together on campus and we wanted to swim or something?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know how we got the money for it or the permission to do it or if we had permission to do it. It's really hazy. But we and we went swimming and had pizza, and we just had a lot of fun. I do you remember?
Speaker 3:I do not. Oh my gosh. I don't even know how that would have worked. Like, you have to sign out and say where you're going and what time it is, you know? So I'm glad we did that though.
Speaker 1:It was, so we can talk about just that piece of it that's a little less triggering but was still legitimate trauma of how it was not about the way I think about faith now or expressing my faith. It was about control and it was about Yeah. Like exactly what you just said that we literally had to get permission to leave the building and to report back when we got back in and it was control and it was shame.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much shame that they were in the position to, to heap on to people who weren't meeting their expectations. You know, we're just like we were still teenagers, and they had so much authority, not just, like, to teach us, but to spiritually guide us.
Speaker 3:You know, it just seems like they thought they knew the right way to be a Christian and that we had to be that. And I think with you, they saw like this piece of clay they wanted to mold exactly how they wanted to do it. And I think, that was the problem with you having friends. They didn't they only wanted their own influence on you, I feel like.
Speaker 1:I'm remembering how well, I got sick as well. I got really sick and my ears got worse. And so I was trying to finish the music degree, but by the time my ears were worse, I didn't have cochlear implants yet. And I could not pass the ear training, and like I would be laying on the piano. I remember.
Speaker 1:Like Beethoven or something trying to pass the ear training, I couldn't, and you could just whip it out so quick and I would be like, no! I can't get it! Why
Speaker 3:did they make you do ear training?
Speaker 1:Right? Like, I mean, I would like to say that as a deaf person, there are many things I have reclaimed in my life. Passing the ear training test was not one of the things I was able to do and they were doing it on the keyboard. So I couldn't even feel it like I could on the piano, even if I were guessing. Felt like I couldn't feel it the same as I could feel it on a piano.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And they would put the headphones on my head and I'm like, I can't hear.
Speaker 3:Hello? Oh my gosh. Do you wanna talk about, like, your your health? Like, the couple of things I mentioned about you having a body memory.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That sounds fun to talk about.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Not really.
Speaker 1:No. We can because I don't remember this at all. But first, before we do that, tell me what do you even remember about DID, or how did you find out about DID, or what was that like for you?
Speaker 3:Well, the little knowledge that I had about it before I met you was from a psychology class in high school. And I think we did watch clips of Sybil. That is not what my real life experience with DID ended up being like. So I don't remember. I know that our friend told me, about some of the things that some of your, like, health issues.
Speaker 3:I mean, you were in a wheelchair and that you were Deaf. This is a side note, but I feel like there was maybe a meeting at the beginning of the year of our entire dorm where they talked about how you were in a wheelchair and there's a person in a wheelchair in the dorm. And does that sound familiar?
Speaker 1:That was so embarrassing. I was so sick and I just I probably didn't even need to be at school actually, but I was homeless and no one knew what to do with me. And so it was one more way that I was really kind of literally trapped there. Like I don't think people understand. It wasn't just like we didn't know how to call our parents and go home or we didn't know how to go find a different school.
Speaker 1:It was like I had no transportation by the end of things. I literally could not get away.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I had nowhere to go if I did leave.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had I don't know. I wish I had done something for you.
Speaker 1:You did. You stayed my friend. All this you've listened to the podcast. I've wrestled with this and wrestled this with this, and this is one of the reasons why. Because the places that were supposed to be safest of all, church, the Christian college, the groups of women that say they're ministering to other women, these are the places that wounded me the most.
Speaker 1:And so it it feels like I'm not good enough to have friends. It feels like I'm not good enough to know how to be a friend good enough. It feels like no one's gonna keep me. Like all those traumas, like this reinforces it even if it's not a reenactment that I'm doing on purpose. But as I've been in therapy, I've realized like that's not true.
Speaker 1:There are people I met at the beginning of the podcast that I am still friends with. And then she came out and was like, hey, I found your podcast. I can't believe I found you again. Let's talk about college. Oh, she's a friend.
Speaker 1:And then here you are. You've been here this whole time, and I'm a terrible friend, but you've been my And friend that really has been everything to me. And what has given me courage to even try other friendships, much less relationships or children or anything like that. Yours are adorable, by the way. But seriously, that is everything.
Speaker 1:I know we've talked about that in the past that you've you've thought, like, why didn't I take you home with me or or something? Because I had parents even if you didn't have parents. But but again, like we were children. We were you even went early. Like, you were a smarty pants.
Speaker 1:And you we were not like 25 and 30 and had our stuff figured out. Like, we we were barely, barely adults, if that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's true. Your kids are the cutest too. Oh, thank
Speaker 1:you for a lot of them.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for saying all of that. You know, I want you to know, like, that you don't have to earn my friendship or be in there's no, like, good friend, bad friend columns or something. And I know that that you need freedom because you have not had it in so many different situations in your life. And so I don't know if I give too much space or too little space.
Speaker 1:No. You you you have been so kind to me, and especially since we reconnected. You have been present, and you have been helpful beyond and just been there and reminded me that you're there and that maybe I can, I don't know, reply to a text someday? And so it's something, but those were hard days back then and even trying to remember it is just so, so painful and I don't, it, it, I am in awe that after everything that's happened and after about DID and now even reconnecting now that you would even still want to be our friend, my friend. And Aw.
Speaker 1:I'm grateful.
Speaker 3:Am. Of course. Aw. Me too. I'm grateful for your friendship.
Speaker 3:And of course, I still wanna be friends. It's good, you know, getting to know you more is good. There hasn't been anything bad about it. Don't worry.
Speaker 1:Did it did it feel bad or weird back then when, like, we were just getting into therapy and just getting diagnosed. And so everything was sort of extra chaotic and also kind of unfiltered in that our system, I guess, wasn't really masking yet and wasn't really knowing that people were watching or paying attention. We learned that the hard way. And so we were just sort of that circle, if you will, where we are just sort of out there all the time doing what we do and you were along for the ride. What what was this felt like?
Speaker 3:It was I mean, I don't know if this is a weird word to use, but it was kind of fun. You know? I just I enjoyed being with you no matter who you were or who you are. So, yeah, sometimes I think I remember maybe the first couple times I saw you more as a child. But it wasn't like it was super shocking or something.
Speaker 3:I don't know. It was just, it was just fun. Like that there are different sides to you or that I get to be part of your life, at an age when I wasn't even able to be there. Do you know what
Speaker 1:I mean? Yes. Exactly. Like, the timeline is all happening at once. I feel like I've known you my whole life.
Speaker 1:We didn't meet until college on the timeline.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's so cool. I wish I had known you my whole life.
Speaker 1:We kept passing each other. We even lived in the same state, and we just kept passing each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This conversation will be continued in the next episode. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing.